Ferrara v. State of Louisiana, Civ. A. No. 70-639.
| Decision Date | 16 October 1972 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 70-639. |
| Citation | 351 F. Supp. 265 |
| Parties | Leonard L. FERRARA et al., Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF LOUISIANA, through the offices of the Honorable John J. McKeithen, Governor, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana |
Sidney M. Bach, Bernstein & Bach, New Orleans, La., for plaintiffs.
William P. Schuler, Second Asst. Atty. Gen. of La., New Orleans, La., for defendants.
Willie D. Maynor, Baton Rouge, La., for Dept. of Public Safety.
Moise W. Dennery, New Orleans, La., R. Gray Sexton, Baton Rouge, La., for Dept. of Civil Service.
Veil David DeVillier, Eunice, La., for Louisiana Troopers' Assn.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., for State of Louisiana.
The plaintiffs, all Louisiana State Troopers, have moved to restore this case to the trial docket and to grant summary judgment in their favor on their claims for back wages allegedly due and owed to them. The defendants, various state officials and agencies, oppose these motions and move for summary judgment or, in the alternative, to dismiss the plaintiffs' suit for want of prosecution.
The plaintiffs in this case have presented an apparently simple suit for back pay allegedly due and owing to them for overtime hours worked over a four-year period.1 The prosecution of their action, however, has foundered in a morass created in part by state law and in part by the federal doctrine of abstention, so that now, more than two years after suit was first filed here, the plaintiffs find themselves no closer to a resolution of their contentions than they were initially. When the plaintiffs first presented their action to this court, I chose to abstain until Louisiana courts could pass on a number of perplexing questions of state law that it presented.2 I did retain jurisdiction over this cause, however, to be exercised "should anything prevent a prompt State Court disposition"3 of the plaintiffs claims. For reasons set out in more detail below, I feel that the considerations motivating my initial abstention no longer apply with the same force, and have decided, therefore, to restore this case to the trial docket.
This action was first filed in 1970 and was converted into a class action by and on behalf of a plaintiff class consisting of all active or retired state troopers who had been employed between July 27, 1966 and January 1, 1969. The complaint alleged that in 1966 the Louisiana Legislature had enacted a bill providing that state troopers should be compensated at the rate of time and a half for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week and had appropriated money for that purpose.4 It asserted further that each succeeding year monies had been similarly appropriated and designated as a source of payment for overtime hours worked, but that the Division of State Police of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety had not applied the legislative appropriations to their intended purpose.5 Consequently, the complaint averred, all of the plaintiff class had performed overtime labor pursuant to the requests of their superiors for which they had received no compensation whatsoever. The plaintiffs sought by way of relief a declaration that the overtime sums allegedly due to each of them, either as specified by the provisions of the Legislative Act of 1966, or in the alternative, as required by rules promulgated almost contemporaneously with this Act by the State Civil Service Commission6 were legally due them. The State of Louisiana through the State Department of Public Safety, Division of State Police and the Department of State Civil Service as well as various state officials were named as defendants.
The case was in this posture when my first opinion was entered in this cause. At that time, I entertained grave doubts as to the validity of the Legislative Act of 1966 under the Louisiana Constitution,7 and so questioned whether the plaintiffs could assert any rights under it. This important issue of Louisiana law, I felt, was best left for resolution in an appropriate state forum. As to the plaintiffs' claim that their right to overtime pay was also guaranteed under rules promulgated by the State Civil Service Commission,8 I noted that the plaintiffs had a right under these same Rules to appeal the Department of Public Safety's refusal to pay them.9 I thus hoped to avail myself of the administrative expertise of the Commission in order to determine whether the plaintiffs were entitled to the monies they sought. Thus, in my initial opinion I abstained from deciding the plaintiffs' claims, saying:
This court's expectations that state administrative and judicial tribunals would do much to clarify the issues in this case have been largely satisfied. In 1971 the Supreme Court of Louisiana in the case of Louisiana Civil Services League v. Forbes, 258 La. 390, 246 So.2d 800 (1971) construed the Civil Service Amendment of the Louisiana Constitution11 as conferring on the State Civil Service Commission the exclusive power to fix, alter, or amend the salaries of state employees covered by that Amendment.12 An attempt by the Legislature to act in this area by virtue of other constitutional provisions13 was null and void. Although the Forbes litigation dealt with a 1970 enactment which purported to vary the terms of a Commission rule, while the law here at issue conforms with a subsequent Commission's pronouncement, it nevertheless seems clear that the 1966 Act likewise was beyond the power of the State Legislature to adopt.14 While counsel for plaintiffs have strenously opposed this interpretation of the Forbes decision, for reasons that will be detailed below, I need not resolve that state constitutional question here.15
In a rather different fashion, this court has also been aided in understanding the administrative problems that this case presents. Shortly after this suit was filed, the defendant Department of Public Safety began to pay all state troopers for the overtime they worked at the allegedly proper time and a half rate. Thus no claims from these plaintiffs for overtime pay have arisen within the last two years. By the Commission's own Rules, all claims antedating that period are now prescribed.16 Since the plaintiffs did not seek an administrative determination of the validity of their claims at any time prior or subsequent to this court's earlier opinion, I am now deprived of the Commission's expertise in this matter.17 This omission, while regrettable, is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the State Department of Public Service has admitted that "State Troopers did perform overtime work and . . . further . . . that all State Troopers did perform such overtime work. . . ."18 Thus I feel confident that formerly troubling questions of state law and state administrative procedure have been considerably simplified and substantially explicated since this case was last before me, and would no longer prove to be formidable barriers to the adjudication of the plaintiffs' rights.
These developments alone would not normally serve as an adequate basis for dissolving my stay of all proceedings here, since one of the primary purposes of the doctrine of abstention is to avoid the unnecessary decision of federal constitutional questions. In a typical case I would continue to abstain so that Louisiana courts might resolve the plaintiffs' claims through resort to state law, leaving the plaintiffs the right to reserve their federal claim for decision here, should they fail to obtain relief in the state courts. National Education Ass'n v. Lee County Board of Public Instruction, 467 F.2d 447 (5th Cir. 1972); England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 375 U.S. 411, 84 S. Ct. 461, 11 L.Ed.2d 440 (1964). This case, however, is anything but typical. Two distinct features of this litigation make it inappropriate to compel the plaintiffs to resort further to state courts. First, the plaintiffs have found it almost impossible to get any meaningful state court relief because of the doctrine of sovereign immunity as it has developed in the State of Louisiana. Second, as will appear below, the state law claims of the plaintiffs are completely overshadowed by their federal claim.
The Louisiana Constitution, Article 3, Section 35, as amended provides in part:
The Legislature is empowered to waive, by specific or general laws or resolutions, the immunity from suit and from liability of the state, and of . . . departments, commissions, . . . and other public or governmental bodies.
The doctrine of sovereign immunity there referred to has been described by the Supreme Court of Louisiana as "inherent in the most elementary concepts of governmental sovereignty; . . . implicit in our constitution and . . . repeatedly recognized by our courts."19 When the State itself is a defendant, "there are no exceptions"20 to the doctrine. This immunity extends to the officers of the State21 and to any state agency unless it is endowed by the statutes creating it with an existence separate from that of the state by being empowered to "sue or be sued" in its own name.22 Since none of the agencies sued here are of this variety, all of the defendants in this case are, under well-settled Louisiana jurisprudence, immune from any suit to which the State does not consent,23 provided...
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Ables v. Mooney
...the general meaning of the term. We find the results in State v. Boykin, 109 Ariz. 289, 508 P.2d 1151 (1973), and Ferrara v. State of Louisiana, 351 F.Supp. 265 (E.D. La.1972) more reasonable. In Boykin, the Supreme Court of Arizona found no statutory authorization for payment of overtime c......
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State ex rel. Jeanise v. Waguespack
...filed a class action in United States District Court on March 17, 1970, seeking recovery of overtime pay. See Ferrara et al. v. State of Louisiana, (D.C.La.) 351 F.Supp. 265. The class action was compromised in 1973. The relators in the present case rejected the compromise and withdrew from......